I just became the Pirate King, and you're telling me I also time-traveled at the same time.

Chapter 1102 It's best not to come

The dagger slashed upwards, its tip aimed at Jiang Yan's wrist, which was holding the sword.

This strike was delivered without any spiritual power; it relied purely on muscle strength and precise angle.

Jiang Yan was forced to release his right hand, and the longsword slipped from his grasp. However, before the sword hit the ground, he caught the hilt with his left hand and used the momentum to take three steps back.

His back slammed against the mountain wall next to the entrance of the cave, and pebbles fell from the wall and landed on his shoulder.

Chu Yang did not pursue.

He twirled the dagger between his fingers, flicking away a drop of blood from the blade—a shallow cut on Jiang Yan's wrist, not deep, but precisely positioned in the gap of the wrist flexor tendon.

Jiang Yan moved his right hand; his fingers could still move, but his grip strength had clearly weakened.

"You're not cultivating spiritual power." Jiang Yan stared at the gray mist shield on Chu Yang's chest.

The fog shield was slowly dissipating, and the gray fog gradually receded back into Chu Yang's body. The silver-white core flashed and then disappeared.

"What is that?"

"It's not important," Chu Yang said.

Jiang Yan asked no more questions.

He switched the longsword from his left hand back to his right. The wound was still bleeding, but he didn't reduce the strength in his grip on the sword at all.

Disciples of the Tiangang Sect receive training in wielding a sword with one hand from the very first day they enter the sect; there is no difference between their left and right hands.

He pointed the tip of his sword at the ground, and suddenly a layer of frosty white ice crystals began to condense on the blade.

Ice crystals began to spread from the hilt of the sword, extending all the way to the tip, transforming the entire silver-white longsword into an ice sword within a few breaths.

The temperature around the grotto suddenly dropped, and Chu Yang's breath condensed into white mist in the air.

"The second of the Nine Heavenly Swords—Frostfall," Jiang Yan announced the name of the sword move.

It's not about showing off, but rather a rule of the Tiangang Sect that one must announce their name before each sword strike. This rule was set by the founding patriarch, supposedly to give the opponent a chance to prepare, but in reality, it's more about self-confidence.

His sword tip flicked upwards from the ground with extremely light and slow movements, as if he were using the tip of his sword to pick up a petal that had fallen onto the water's surface.

But as the sword tip slashed upwards, the ground beneath Chu Yang's feet began to freeze.

It wasn't an ice pillar shot from the tip of a sword, but rather the ground itself freezing—the moisture in the soil solidified into ice in an instant, and the ice layer spread from Jiang Yan's feet toward Chu Yang at a visible speed. The ice surface was as smooth as a mirror, reflecting the warm light of the grotto pearl.

When the ice reached Chu Yang's feet, he looked down and realized that there was no friction between the soles of his shoes and the ice.

His body swayed slightly on the ice, and in that instant as he adjusted his balance, Jiang Yan moved.

Jiang Yan was no longer restricted by friction on the ice. The soles of his boots condensed into a thin layer of ice blades the moment they touched the ice. The ice blades bit into the ice and gave him a push in the opposite direction.

He was at least twice as fast as he was on mud, gliding across the ice with his body almost touching the surface, his longsword slashing horizontally, aiming for Chu Yang's knee.

As the ice sword sliced ​​through the air, countless tiny ice crystals formed in the air around its blade, floating in the air like a frozen drizzle.

Chu Yang did not choose to take the sword head-on on the ice.

He plunged his dagger downwards, the tip piercing the ice. Then, using the tip as a pivot, he flipped and leaped into the air, his body spinning half a circle before landing on a rock outside the ice.

As he landed, the dagger was pulled out of the ice, leaving a circular hole in the ice. The crack at the hole spread outwards by about half a foot before stopping.

Jiang Yan's attack missed, but without pausing, he withdrew his sword, spun half a circle in place, and then raised his longsword from bottom to top with the third Heavenly Gang Sword, Awakening of Insects.

The ice crystals on the ice sword shattered as the sword rose, turning into countless thin ice needles that covered Chu Yang's direction.

Each ice needle was only as long as a fingernail, but there were so many of them that it looked as if someone had smashed an entire sheet of ice and poured it over them.

Chu Yang handed the dagger to his left hand, and reached into his sleeve with his right hand, pulling out something.

It's not a weapon.

It was a handful of peach pits.

The peach pits were the ones the monkeys usually shared. They would gnaw the peach flesh clean and then just throw them on the ground. Chu Yang would pick up some when he had nothing to do, wash them clean, and put them in his sleeve. He originally planned to keep them for Shi Tou to practice his finger strength, since crushing peach pits with your fingers is a good way to strengthen your knuckles.

At that moment, he grabbed the peach pits in his hand, squeezed them hard, and the peach pits shattered into seven or eight pieces in his palm. Then he flicked his wrist, and the peach pit fragments scattered towards the group of ice needles.

The peach pit fragment struck the ice needle, but instead of shattering it, it deflected the needle.

Seven or eight peach pit fragments pierced through the air, creating seven or eight channels. Ice needles slashed across the sides of the channels and embedded themselves in the mountain wall and ground behind Chu Yang, making a dense "ding-ding" sound.

An ice needle flew past Chu Yang's earlobe, leaving a thin cut. Blood seeped out and congealed into a small red bead, but did not flow down because the skin around the wound had been numb from the cold of the ice needle.

Jiang Yan looked at the peach pit fragments scattered on the ground, a hint of confusion flashing in his eyes.

This approach was so outdated that he had never seen it in any of the classic texts of the Tiangang Sect.

There are many ways to break the ice needle formation: you can deflect it with protective true energy, melt it with fire magic, or cleave it with sword energy. But using leftover peach pits? That's not even a method; it's more like a quick-thinking idea from street thugs in a fight.

But it was precisely this quick thinking that threw Jiang Yan off his rhythm.

The swordsmanship of the Tiangang Sect emphasizes uprightness and follows the sword manual in every step. The opponent's response is also based on the sword manual. As the sword is fought in this way, the sword momentum will accumulate and become stronger. By the ninth sword, the power is eighty-one times that of the first sword.

But Chu Yang didn't follow the sword manual at all; he always interrupted Jiang Yan's swordplay before it was fully unleashed.

"Who exactly are you?" Jiang Yan asked again.

This time, he wasn't asking about Chu Yang's cultivation level, but rather about Chu Yang himself.

Chu Yang did not answer.

He switched the dagger from his left hand back to his right and flexed his fingers.

My left fingertips are a little numb. I squeezed too hard when I was crushing the peach pits. The skin on my knuckles was rubbed off by the rough surface of the peach pits, revealing the tender pink flesh underneath.

He wiped his hands on his pants, removing the scraps of skin and blood, and then gripped the dagger tightly again.

Over there, the battle on the scree slope had completely transformed into a different scene.

The duel between Sun Wukong and Chifeng Zhenren was no longer a contest of techniques between the two individuals, but rather a systematic destruction of the terrain.

The scree slope is no longer a scree slope—it is now a battlefield full of pits and cracks, with not a single intact stone on the ground. All the scree has been crushed into dust by the shockwaves generated when the two fought.

Seven peach trees on the edge of the peach grove had fallen, and the remaining few were also leaning to one side or the other, their roots protruding from the mud like dying fingers.

The water level in the pool dropped by at least two feet, not because it evaporated, but because it was blown away by the shock wave. The water splashed onto the surrounding mountain walls and the ground, turning the soil into a muddy mess.

Three new nicks appeared on Master Chifeng's red blade.

Each notch was left from a head-on collision with the Golden Cudgel.

He had never met anyone who could push him to this extent in a weapons duel.

The Crimson Blade is made of Crimson Flame Black Iron, a treasure passed down through three generations of the Heavenly Gang Sect. The phrase "cutting iron like mud" is an insult to it. It can cut through gold and jade, cleave through array patterns and barriers, and even slice a small mountain in half with a single strike.

But in front of the Golden Cudgel, it was like an ordinary iron knife encountering a diamond.

Sun Wukong also had several wounds on his body.

The knife wound on his left arm was still oozing blood, and there was a new burn on his right leg, left by the blade energy of Master Chifeng. A piece of skin was charred, with black edges and dark red flesh showing in the middle.

A small tuft of his hair was shaved off by the blade, the cut clean, the ends fluttering in the wind.

But these wounds seemed to have no effect on him; his movements did not slow down at all, and the golden light on the golden cudgel grew brighter and brighter.

"Your sword is about to break." Sun Wukong hoisted his golden cudgel onto his shoulder and gestured with his chin toward the red sword.

Master Chifeng glanced down at the nick on the red blade.

The three notches are arranged in a serrated pattern, with the deepest one extending to one-third of the width of the blade.

He ran his fingers along the blade, the heat of the Crimson Flame Iron making his fingertips hiss, but he didn't pull his hand away.

He smeared the blade energy from his fingertips onto the nick, and a brief flash of red light appeared at the nick before fading away again. The blade energy was no longer enough to repair the physical damage to the weapon.

"Even if it's broken, it's enough to kill you," said Master Chifeng.

But without realizing it, he tightened his grip on the knife hilt, his knuckles turning white from the force.

Sun Wukong stopped speaking.

He took the golden cudgel off his shoulder, held the middle of the cudgel with one hand, and touched the ground with the end of the cudgel.

This posture is completely different from before. Previously, he held the stick with both hands in a wide, sweeping motion, but now he has changed to one hand, and he is not holding the end of the stick but the middle of the shaft. This means that what he is going to do next is not power, but speed.

The attack radius of the middle section of the Golden Cudgel is half that of the end, but the attack frequency can be doubled.

Master Chifeng also noticed this.

He held the red sword horizontally in front of him, with the tip pointing in the direction of Sun Wukong, and placed his other hand on the back of the sword.

His breathing was no longer as even as before—the continuous high-intensity combat had consumed a lot of his demonic power, while Sun Wukong's stamina seemed inexhaustible.

Just then, a muffled sound came from the other side of the cave.

Both of their eyes were drawn to it at the same time.

It's Jiang Yan.

Jiang Yan's body flew out of the cave entrance—not by jumping out on its own, but by being forced out.

His back slammed against the mountain wall next to the cave entrance. He hung there for a moment before sliding down and kneeling on one knee.

His ice sword was broken, the blade split in two, the break not a clean cut, but rather as if it had been smashed apart by something.

His hand, which was gripping the sword hilt, was covered in blood—the wound on his wrist had doubled in size, and blood was dripping down his fingers, staining the mud on the ground a dark brown.

Chu Yang walked out of the cave.

His steps were slow, and his breathing was a little heavier than usual. His clothes were cut open in three places by the sword—one on his left shoulder, one on his right rib, and one on his abdomen.

The cut on his left shoulder was the deepest, damaging the skin and flesh. Blood seeped from the wound, staining the left side of his shirt a dark red.

But his hands were very steady.

The dagger was held in his right hand, the blade covered with a thin layer of frost, which had condensed after colliding with Jiang Yan's ice sword multiple times. The frost was slowly melting, turning into water droplets that dripped from the tip of the blade.

"Your sword is broken," Chu Yang said to Jiang Yan. "Without a sword, you can't use the ninth sword."

"You can't beat me unless you use your ninth sword."

Jiang Yan knelt on one knee, looking down at the broken sword in his hand.

His face showed no anger or frustration, only a deep sense of bewilderment.

He wasn't without defeats. During his hundred years of cultivation at the Tiangang Sect, he had lost countless times in battles with his senior and junior brothers.

But those losses were all traceable; they were due to insufficient cultivation, unskilled sword techniques, or opponents who were stronger than him.

But the person in front of him—this person's spiritual power was clearly far inferior to his, his swordsmanship had no systematic rules, and he didn't even have a decent weapon. He broke his Heavenly Gang Nine Swords with just a dagger and a peach pit.

I didn't defeat him, I interrupted him.

From beginning to end, he didn't even use his fifth sword strike; each time he was about to gather his strength, he was interrupted.

"What's the name of your dagger?" Jiang Yan looked up, a trace of blood at the corner of his mouth.

Chu Yang looked down at the dagger in his hand.

Besides the melting frost, there were several extremely fine scratches on the blade of the dagger—the result of multiple collisions with the ice sword.

However, the blade itself did not deform at all, and the gray-white blade remained as cold and sharp as ever under the sunlight and water.

"I don't have a name," Chu Yang said. "My master passed it down to me."

Jiang Yan paused for a moment.

Then he did something Chu Yang hadn't expected: he stuck the broken sword into the ground in front of him, clasped his hands together, and gave Chu Yang a standard cultivator's salute.

"Jiang Yan, an inner disciple of the Tiangang Sect."

May I ask your name?

This is neither a provocation nor post-war politeness.

Jiang Yan's tone was very serious, so serious that Chu Yang remained silent for a moment before answering.

"Chu Yang".

"Chu Yang." Jiang Yan repeated the name, as if savoring the taste of a fruit he had never seen before.

He pulled the broken sword from the ground and put it back in its scabbard—the scabbard could only hold half of the broken sword, with the other half sticking out, which looked somewhat comical.

He stood up, supporting himself on his knees. When he stood up straight, his body swayed slightly, but he didn't fall.

"Next time I will come to you with all nine swords," he said.

Chu Yang glanced at him.

"It's best not to come."

When Master Chifeng saw Jiang Yan being knocked out of the cave, his face finally darkened completely.